IRELAND
Irish Times
Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien, Patsy McGarry
Mon, Jun 9, 2014
Child safeguarding expert Ian Elliott has welcomed a suggestion that he be part of any investigation which may be set up by the State into mother and baby homes in Ireland.
“Absolutely. I’d be very, very interested,” he told The Irish Times last night. “If there’s anything useful I can contribute, I’d be delighted.”
Chief executive of the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children until June of last year, his name was mentioned yesterday by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, as the sort of person who ought to be on such an investigation team.
Dr Martin said it was very important that any investigation should be separated from the church and State or any other organisation that was involved “because there is an entanglement there that goes right through a period of Irish history. It is only an independent person who would be able to that.”
Such a commission should “perhaps be headed by a judicial personality” and he thought a person of the calibre of Ian Elliott, whom he described as a “very strong” person in the investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church, would be a very interesting addition to any such commission, he said.
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